This lecture was given by the two artists who made up the exhibition "The View Without" at the Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery, curated by Margie Vecchio. McAuslan was the first to speak. He told us about attending school in Oregon and his first forays into mural work, which he connected to the large-scale installation in the Sheppard Gallery. He focused mainly on his many obsessions with collecting, especially plastic objects. He has been collecting things since childhood, and he enjoys using these collected objects in his work. The piece of his that I found most interesting was "Homefill", which was also on display in the gallery. He created it by disassembling an aged, decorative windmill, xeroxing each individual part (sometimes dozens of times) and then reconstructing these pieces into a functioning identical windmill. The degree of detail displayed was stunning. I was less impressed with the lecture itself, in which the artist came across as a bit conceited and not highly observant, as he seemed to think that the Knowledge Center lacked a physical library of books and felt the need to comment on this supposed "break from the past".
Jack Daws, originally from Kentucky and currently a resident of Seattle, showed off a large amount of his work. His art is conceptual in nature, often racy and sometimes quite funny. One of the pieces he showed was a photographic print of two stacks of McDonald's fries meant to look like the twin towers of the World Trade Center. When I asked him about his choice of materials, he replied that he chose fries because of McDonald's status as an icon of American capitalism and not because of the "freedom fries" controversy. He also showed us a penny made of solid gold, made to look like a standard penny and then superstitiously put into circulation. I really enjoyed what I saw of his work, and he came across as genial and irreverent.
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